UC professor receives Biemann Medal from ASMS for significant achievement in mass spectrometry

Yinsheng Wang, a professor of chemistry at the University of California, Riverside, has received the Biemann Medal, awarded by the American Society for Mass Spectrometry (ASMS) to an individual early in his or her career in recognition of significant achievement in basic or applied mass spectrometry.

Wang received the medal and gave an award lecture earlier this month at the annual conference of the ASMS in Minneapolis, Minn. The medal is accompanied by a cash prize of $5,000.

"I feel humbled to be the recipient of this year's Biemann Medal," Wang said. "This is a great recognition of our work by the mass spectrometry community. I appreciate very much the hard work of my graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, without which this would not have been possible."

The first person at UC Riverside to win the medal, Wang focuses his research on discovering the biological consequences of DNA damage and on unraveling mechanisms of action for anti-tumor drugs and environmental toxicants. His laboratory's use and development of mass spectrometry, synthetic organic chemistry, biochemistry and molecular biology enable us to understand, at the molecular level, how various DNA damage products are repaired, and how they perturb the efficiency and fidelity of the flow of genetic information during DNA replication and transcription.